|
Green
Initiatives Start by Reducing Waste
By Fred Klammt
Businesses look to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for guidelines
on how to be better at operating a green business. But in some cases, the
EPA is shunned for fear of restrictions. And for many, the EPA is just the
leader of being less bad—by prescribing exactly how we shall be less
bad and by how many fines are to be paid if we don’t obey.
Unfortunately, Americans have the idea of being good for the biosphere upside
down. For the most part, we are trying to be less destructive and lighten
our footprint. Contributing less to landfills is the first and easiest commitment
any corporation or institution can make to the environment. Building construction
waste accounts for 30 to 50 percent (depending on your location) of the world’s
landfills. Make an effort to reduce buying things and throwing things away. The
latter is much easier to do.
How to start
- Measure how many pounds you put in the landfill.
- Identify the top three things in your landfill contribution
(e.g. Dumpster dive)
- Look into who is generating this landfill contribution. Conduct
root cause analyses (i.e. ask ‘why?’ five times).
- Analyze the supply chain behind no. 3 and explore alternatives.
- Look into reusing and reducing at each step.
- Finally look at using more benign materials.
Measure and manage
The old adage, ‘you can’t manage it if you don’t
measure it’ comes into play. Get numbers from your waste
department or waste hauler. How many trash bins and Dumpster’s
contents were hauled in the past 30 days? What were the weights
of each container? What waste was inside the containers?
Packaging is an enormous waste producer. Products arrive packaged
in useless wrapping, Styrofoam, plastics, POP, and other toxin-filled
materials. Look into your supplier chain and purchasing arrangements
and buy the end products in bulk without the packaging where possible.
Construction trash is a close second. Whether it’s new construction,
tenant improvements or renovation, most of the removed materials
go to a landfill. Again, a different supply chain such as industrial
recyclers, landscaping and gardening centers, charities such as
Habitat for Humanity ‘Restores’, etc., may all have
some use for project scrap.
Once a manager has reduced trash, the organization will save on
front end packaging costs, waste hauling landfill charges and receive
a tax credit. Reducing landfill waste is the start of a better ‘greener’ initiative
that requires business people to reduce consumption at the start
of the cycle.
Fred Klammt is principal of Aptek Associates, specializing
in adapting appropriate and leading-edge processes and technologies
for the built environment. Over the past 30 years, Klammt has
worked on corporate real estate and facility management projects
for over 40 Fortune 100 companies including Cisco, Northrop Grumman,
HP, Southern CalEdison, USC, Paramount Studios.
He was one of California’s first Certified
Energy Auditors in 1978, and is a Baldrige-Certified Quality
Auditor for the State of California and Senate
Productivity Awards. Klammt can be reached via fred@winsol.org
|
